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the rootwe start off life with a fully functioning amygdala, ad a non-functioning hippocampus—this means we're capable of experiencing fear, anxiousness, wailing disappointment, traumatic big emotions without any narrative contextualization—the amygdala tags as threatening anything we experience during an emotional stateif we're scared and our parents are too busy paying bills, working, dealing with their own lives, we experience 'people not paying attention to us' with vulnerability and fear—again, we have no hippocampus in crucial, formative years, to bring a sense of background perspective into why our felt needs aren't being met—regardless of how attentive or inattentive our families really were, the mind can build up these associations (of not being emotionally mirrored when we need it) into entire complexes of traumatic feelings, such as being abandoned, rejected, unconnected, unprotected, unloved.being abandoned is the most threatening vulnerable experience …

[quotes at first are from David Foster Wallace's Kenyon commencement speech. He starts out by telling the story of fish that don't know what water is...]DFW: "everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centerdness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. "Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. "…[DFW goes on to say that the work is] getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered [where everything is interpreted] through this lens of sel…

the mind's circuit board is hardwired to feel insecure, unprotectedso we look around for things to make us feel secure—feeding off the world, upadanaclinging onto the pleasant sensations, phenomena for security—sensual pleasure, financial gain, approval, productivity, etc.beating back, fending off the sensations & phenomena —sensual discomfort, financial loss/instability, disapproval, unproductiveness, etc. as we consume and repel the world, the feelings of security last for a short while, then we are returned once again to the insecurity that is our default wiring—this is what keeps us running aroundworse, eventually as we feed off of these things, be it money, or approval, or health, we're setting ourselves up for horrible states in the future, as we eventually lose the ability to find peace elsewhere—the energy, momentum, karma, of clinging and resisting creates —grasping and resisting is stress, it is dukkhaso we all need to practice letting go. this requires a place a…